Nixon's Gamble: How a President's Own Secret Government Destroyed His Administration

After being sworn in as president, Richard Nixon told the assembled crowd that “government will listen. ... Those who have been left out, we will try to bring in.” But that same day, he obliterated those pledges of greater citizen control of government by signing National Security Decision Memorandum 2, a document that made sweeping changes to the national security power structure. Nixon’s signature erased the influence that the departments of State and Defense, as well as the CIA, had over Vietnam and the course of the Cold War. The new structure put Nixon at the center, surrounded by loyal aides and a new national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, who coordinated policy through the National Security Council under Nixon’s command. Using years of research and revelations from newly released documents, USA Today reporter Ray Locker upends much of the conventional wisdom about the Nixon administration and its impact and shows how the creation of this secret, unprecedented, extra-constitutional government undermined U.S. policy and values. In doing so, Nixon sowed the seeds of his own destruction by creating a climate of secrecy, paranoia, and reprisal that still affects Washington today.

About the Author :
Ray Locker is the Washington enterprise editor for USA Today, where he supervises investigative reporting in the Washington bureau, as well as the White House, military and money in politics reporters. His work as a reporter and editor has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes. He covered the final years of George Wallace’s political career at the Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama; spent 13 years as a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Tampa Tribune; worked for the Los Angeles Times; and ran the Associated Press bureau in Sacramento, where he coordinated coverage of California government and politics. Locker is married to Margaret Talev, a White House correspondent for Bloomberg News. They have two daughters and live in Rockville, Maryland.

Review :
"The story we only thought we knew. Ray Locker gives us back our lost perspective on Richard Nixon and the governance we inherited from his tragedy. This courageous, graceful book is a major achievement and lasting public service.” -- Roger Morris, author of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician “Richard Nixon accomplished a great deal--opening up China, arms control with Russia, ending the Vietnam War--but he did this, in no small measure, by deceit. In a tour de force of historical research, Ray Locker reveals a mind-boggling web of lies and half-truths. A gripping read and an important book.”--Evan Thomas,New York Times bestselling author of Being Nixon: A Man Divided and Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Battle to Save the World “Ray Locker has assembled a masterful study that asks a question no one else has – was the Nixon White House flawed by design? A deep dive of government documents and primary sources, Locker examines the very foundations of the Nixon administration and finds something very troubling. A must read for anyone wanting a better understanding of the time period.”--Luke A. Nichter, co-author of New York Times bestselling series The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972 and The Nixon Tapes: 1973 Even more impressive, that’s not the most important part of this richly illuminating history of Richard Nixon’s many layered attempt to govern by secret. In uncovering the huge hidden wager that Nixon took, playing for his place in world history and going all in with nothing less than the presidency itself, Ray Locker shows us Nixon’s hole cards and how badly he misplayed them. We’re all still trying to recoup the loss.”--Ed Gray, co-author with his father L. Patrick Gray III of In Nixon’s Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate "’Why did he do it?’ has long been one of the great questions of the Nixon presidency. Ray Locker provides a set of fascinating new answers, based on dogged investigative research and a keen instinct for making sense of Richard Nixon's strange secret world.”—Beverly Gage, professor of American history at Yale University “Ray Locker establishes Nixon gambled to achieve foreign policy achievements and lasting structural government changes only ultimately to be brought down by his secret modus operandi. He also convincingly documents that John Dean, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and the FBI’s top intelligence officer William C. Sullivan aided in Nixon’s demise with the duplicitous roles they played by giving misleading information to the press and Congress.”–Joan Hoff, author of Nixon Reconsidered “Ray Locker manages to deliver a book about Nixon and Watergate that seems remarkably fresh. Locker, whose research is prodigious and writing sublime, provides a page turner that gives important new insights into why Nixon made the critical decisions that brought down his presidency. "Nixon's Gamble" is a persuasive and absorbing addition to the best books about the most complex modern President.”--Gerald Posner, author of God’s Bankers and Case Closed “Fascinating… Locker’s book is more than just gripping political narrative; it is a critical examination of one of the most pivotal and flawed leaders in modern American history, one whose story still reverberates today almost a half-century later.”—James Scott, The Post and Courier, Charleston “For book authors, Richard Nixon is a former U.S. president who just keeps on giving. Every time I believe nothing new is left to be written about Nixon's demise, another professional historian or another skilled journalist surprises me. Ray Locker, a Washington correspondent for USA Today, is one of those skilled journalists. His sophisticated theory about how Nixon's instincts for secrecy sabotaged some admirable foreign policy initiatives got me thinking along new pathways.” --Steve Weinberg, author of Armand Hammer and a forthcoming biography of Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau